The Offer

Open an HSBC Premier relationship with a balance of $100,000 or more in new funds and receive a $750 bonus

Open an HSBC Advance relationship with a balance of $10,000 or more in new funds and receive a $350 bonus

The $10k/$100k must be funded by 12/21/15 (regardless of the exact date you opened the account), and the money must remain in the account until 3/21/16.

Additionally, both offers require that you receive three direct deposits into your account by 3/21/16.

The Fine Print

Account must be opened by 11/20/15

Bonus will post automatically approximately eight weeks after 3/21/16

Account must be open and in good standing at the time of bonus fulfillment

Limit one per customer (the first line name on the joint account is considered the customer for bonus purposes)

You will receive a 1099 for the bonus amount.

Avoiding Fees

Early Termination Fee

There is a $25 fee for closing the account within 180 days (Link). You’ll anyway end up having the account open for 180 days since you must keep the account open until the bonus posts, which will be around 5/20/15. Even if you opened the account on the last valid date of 11/20/15, it would still be ~180 days until you can close it. Thus, we don’t have to worry much about this fee.

Monthly Fees

The Premier account has a $50 monthly fee which is waived with $100k balance. The Advance account has a $20 monthly fee which is waived with a $10k balance. (Link)

Existing Customer Bonus

If you are already an HSBC checking customer, you are eligible for the exact same bonuses mentioned above with the only difference that the new account you open will be a savings or CD account. All other requirements are the same: for the $350 bonus you’ll need to open a savings/CD with $10k and for the $750 bonus you’ll need $100k. All dates are the same as for the new customer bonus.

A new customer is defined as someone who has not had an HSBC account since 6/22/15. An existing customer is defined as someone who has an HSBC Premier or Advanced checking account as of 9/20/15.

Our Verdict

$350 and $750 bonuses sound good on the surface, but we need to run the numbers here. In order to get the bonus, the funds must be in the account for 3 months, from 12/21/15 until 3/21/16. In practice, the funds will need to remain there for another 8 weeks as you’ll need the $10k/$100k in the account in order to waive the monthly fee.

All told, we’re looking at the $10k/$100 of funds tied up for 5 months, from 12/21/15 until 5/20/16. Let’s round that off and say that the funds will be tied up for 6 months to give some time for the transferring.

HSBC accounts do earn interest, but they earn a measly .01% APY. Let’s do the math of each offer:

Advance $10k Offer – If we’ll assume you would have been earning 1% interest on the $10k, you’ll end up losing ~$50 in interest over the 6 month period that the funds are tied up. You’ll get $350, for a net gain of $300.

Premier $100k offer – If we’ll assume you would have been earning 1% interest on the $100k, you’ll end up losing ~$500 in interest over the 6 month period that the funds are tied up. You’ll get $750, for a net gain of $250.

Ultimately, it wouldn’t make sense to do the Premier offer for the purpose of the higher bonus as you’ll gain more by leaving the additional $90k in a 1% savings account and just tying up the $10k for the higher net gain of $300.

The Advance offer does sound like a good one for someone with $10k lying around. The main additional hardship is managing the three direct deposit requirement. If that is something that you can deal with, the Advance bonus is quite a nice offer.

Update: A reader added a good point that instead of putting the $10k into a checking account, you can open the account with $1 and put $9,999 in a 6-month CD to get .7% APY. This way, you aren’t losing much on the interest and the offer is even better.

Note this looks like it also works for brokerage accounts. You can like kind transfer in and then out without triggering capital gains. HSBC charges a 75$ fee for transferring out according to their fees page. Better option if you have it available to you

There is another very important point that is useful. HSBC is offering a promotional CD for new and existing customers. See http://us.hsbc.com/1/2/home/personal-banking/cds/offer . The rate for a 6 to 9 month CD is 0.70% APY. So, you can open up the checking account with some small amount such as $20. You can simultaneously open a 6 month and 1 day CD with the other $9,980 which will earn 0.70% APY and also help you avoid the $20 fee for the checking account since the total balance in your HSBC accounts is $10,000. I just opened an account at my local HSBC branch using this approach. The branch will not inform you of this promotional rate CD. Bring the web print out available and then they will pull out of a folder the promotional rate sheet and provide this rate to you.

How about buying a 0.7% 100k 6 month CD and opening the Premier account? 100k tied up for 6 months for a loss of about $150 (vs. keeping them in a 1% account) and a gain of $750. Net gain of $600, right?

The fine print for the Advance/Premier offer states that “Funds used to qualify for this offer cannot be used to qualify for any other promotional offer sponsored by HSBC Bank USA, N.A. or HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.”

Given that the 0.7% CD rates are part of a promotional offering I’m not sure if these two offers can be combined.

Kudos to you! $20k in 4 Netspend accounts, $20k in the Consumers Credit Union (myconsumers.org) checking account, all x2 (assuming you are 2 adults in the household), plus all the other possibilities out there you should have a pretty solid buffer of $100k yielding 5% APY before such an offer becomes interesting.

I looked at Consumers Credit Union in the past but it doesn’t really seem like an impressive deal because you also have to open a credit card and spend $1k on it every month.

Taking the opportunity cost into account (2% when compared to a Citi Double Cash) then it drops the actual interest rate to 3.8% (probably closer to 3% when taking into account the tax implications since the Citi DC rewards are tax free whereas the interest here is not).

Considering I don’t see any way of easily automating $1k in monthly credit card transactions, I’ll pass. Maybe I’ll take another look when I’ve run out of other 5% and 3% options, assuming they still offer that rate (it’s only guaranteed for a couple more months it seems).

Of course you’re right about the $1k you have to put on the CC. That’s $20 lost against the double cash but you gain $80+ in interest before taxes every month. Pretty good deal for me. If you qualify for the Visa rewards card it gets better since you get 3% on groceries…

Has anyone noticed that there is a companion CC to go with the Advantage acct/ It has a bonus of 150.00 I think. We have to investigate. Then it would be a 525.00 bonus but with a HP. Chuck, what’s your take?

I opened my account online last week and my application was “conditionally approved”, but they told me I would receive a call unless I call them first at the number they provided. So I called minutes after submitting my application, they verified some information and asked me a few questions about how I planned on using the account (how much will the direct deposits be, if I opened it only for the signup bonus, if I planned on doing international transfers, etc.). The call took maybe 15 minutes then the CSR told me she would submit the application and I would hear from them in a few days. I received an email 2-3 days later telling me my account was opened.

As mentioned above, no CC funding, either check or direct deposit. If you click “check” you can’t go back and select “direct deposit” instead, so be careful.

Anyone have any luck closing the account? For the life of me I can’t get through the automated phone system to a human, seems there’s no way around providing an ATM pin, which I don’t have, and I can’t find a link online to close the account.

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